Gi'Day to all our pom friends and family back home! 

First of all,  before we start another lengthy journal,  apologies on the delay in updating the site! Had a row off of a few of you out there but needless to say we have been having a wild time in Sydney and have yet to be sobre enough to write a journal!!!!

Well where do we start, been over a month now since we last updated and trying to remember that far back is difficult but lets give it a bash......

Arrived in Melbourne and headed straight to the beach to to stay in St Kilda, about 15 mins outside Melbourne city centre......and wished we had kept some of those warm clothes we gave away in New Zealand, it wasnt exactly sunbathing weather and the two piece and trunks stayed firmly in the rucksacks!!

Greg managed to catch a cold the first week in Melbourne, we think it was due to giving up the booze for a week or so (we didnt have a night off for the 10 weeks we had been away)....lesson well and truly learnt......so as soon as Greg was feeling better we were straight to the backpackers bar and didnt do things by half measures...in fact there were a number of measures involved that night!!!!

Melbourne is an amazing city and we even managed to look a bit intellectual by going to a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition (which unbelievable as it sounds, we really enjoyed!). Still being in the New Zealand frame of mind we headed for the tallest building around, the observation deck for some fab views over Melbourne but unfortunately you couldnt jump off of this one!  However most exciting of all.....we bought ourselves some new togs (youve no idea how happy Amanda was...kid in a sweet shop comes to mid!). 

Spent most of our time in Melbourne wishing we were still in New Zealand, strange but it is really difficult trying to get back into city life when you have been used to the open road in a camper with the only company on the way being the odd sheep or cow.....so to make ourselves feel better we hired a car and decided to drive the Great Ocean Rd and then onto the Grampian National Park.

Great Ocean Road has some really amazing beaches as you will from the pics.....went to Bells Beach which is one of the most well known surf beaches in Oz but as you can imagine we didnt partake in any surfing (dont fancy bumping into a 12ft Great White!!)...we even found a beach where you can whale watch from the shore and it was named after our wee nephew..Logans Beach...the whales were amazing but they were a wee bit too far out and we couldnt get any pics.

You get some great views along the way as well, The Twelve Apostles are rock formations that have been worn away from the sea and they are a pretty amazing sight either in the day or as the sun sets.  Loch Ard Gorge is another awesome site where there have been a huge number of shipwrecks and if you look at the pictures you will see why......the waves coming in are unbelievable! You can understand when you drive the coast why surfing is soo huge in Oz, you are never far away from the next wave!

Along the coast a bit there is Thunder Cave...which totally lives up to its name, the waves come crashing into the entrance of the cave and it makes some serious noise as it makes its way to the platform you are standing on...the platform runs down into the cave and we got some great pics from there....bit like being in a washing machine the way the waves were churning!

 Headed onto the Grampian National Park where we done some crazy hikes through the park.....its a shame really as the scenery had been completely ruined by a massive bushfire in February 2006, you can see from the pics how bad it must have been.  Managed to hike our way to the top of mountains (at least small ones), the bottom of waterfalls and through some forests where luckily for us we didnt bump into any of the local snakes!!  Some guy had told us this is the time of year they are at their most vicious as they are rearing their young........ really up for the hiking after that pearl of wisdom!!

We had managed to see Koala's in the wild...they were hard to spot at first as they were so high in the trees but once you spotted one you just kept seeing more and more....oh and how cute are they???  Then out of the blue we got our first glimpse of wild kangaroos...we were at a phone box in Halls Gap (The Grampians) when 7 kangaroos came bounding out of the forest, straight by the phonebox (completely ignoring us in the process) and then stopped on the grass in front of us to graze on some grass..... something you wouldnt see every day back home and it was totally awesome!!!

 Went to a wildlife park on the way back from the Grampians and Amanda was in her element...you could feed the kangaroos in the park as they were roaming around freely....needless to say you couldnt drag Amanda away from them!!! They were sooooo, sooooo cute and most of the girlies had little joeys as well.  Stayed away from the guyz though as they looked a bit scary and as you will see from our pics, they definately had other things on their minds....extra curricular activites should we say!!!!!  A bit sick but really funny as the kidz were still trying to feed them and their mums were trying to veer them away to other kangaroos!!!!!

 They had a few Emu's wandering around as well but you kept youself clear of those guyz...they would peck the hand off you if they tried to eat out of your hand...oh and keep your eyes out of the way as well...nasty!!!  Some family found out the hard way as they tried to eat a packed lunch on a table...needless to say the Emu's had more of their lunch than they did.

Ended the journey by heading back to Melbourne to catch a flight to Sydney where we were met by our old buddy Stevo...staying with Stevo in Sydney for a while until we get a flat of our own...needless to say it could be messy!!!!!

As ever miss you guyz back home loadz...keep up the e-mails and the message board...we like to be up to date on all the goss from back home.

Luv,

Maz and Flem xxxxx